59°F VISIBILITY
SURFACE TEMPERATURE: LOW
Water Conditions HIGH
61°F 10'–20'
In spite of the coolish, breezy conditions, the AM hours look decent for visibility as the week progresses and best for the weekend. Not much to crow about for the surfers though the morning rides will be fairly clean, albeit small. Boaters should especially keep an extra eye out for divers near the reefs and channel edges and divers always mark yourselves and area appropriately.
Visibility based on existing conditions and NOAA predicted swell and weather conditions at press time. Check up-to-date daily visibility/ conditions at the San Diego County Lifeguard info line: 619-221-8824
Moon Calendar SUNRISE
JANUARY SUNSET LENGTH OF DAY
THUR 05
6:52 16:57 10H 5M
SAT 07
6:52 16:58 10H 6M
MON 09
6:52 17:00 10H 8M
WED 11
6:52 17:02
10H 10M
The Pump House Gang got tickets for “spitting on the sidewalk and obstructing pedestrian traffic.”
Wolfe spent roughly a month in 1965
observing the life of a group at WindanSea beach in La Jolla. He called them the Pump House Gang because they congregated around the salmon-pink La Jolla Water System pump house at the end of Nautilus Street. The Pump House kids maintained territorial rights by heaving water balloons on the intruders. Wolfe wrote the story that originally
appeared in two February 1966 New York Magazines and later in a book of his stories. The last paragraph of Wolfe’s tale asks
a question about the future of his Pump House friends, “Tom, boy! John, boy! Neale, boy! Artie, boy! Pam, Liz, Vicki, Jackie Had- dad! After all this — just a pair of bitchen black panther bunions inching down the sidewalk away from the old Pump House stairs?”
Jackie Haddad Hellingson, whose
essay about surfing, “My Ultimate Jour- ney,” appeared in Wolfe’s book, lives in
a hundred-year-old cottage on Draper Avenue in La Jolla. “Well, I know that Kit Weldon is a
diver in Santa Barbara, and Jack MacPher- son, founder of the Mac Meda Destruction Company, is a postman in La Jolla. The Mac Meda Destruction Company was created as a joke by Jack and his friends who were older than the rest of the gang. Jackie recalls that the residents around
the Pump House constantly called the police, and the gang was given an endless stream of tickets for “spitting on the side- walk and obstructing pedestrian traffic.” “At the end of that summer we couldn’t
even sit on the Pump House.” Jackie reflects that the police, and the introduction of drugs to La Jolla, were the beginning of the end for the Gang. “We split up mostly after a battle of the wills; some got into drugs and some didn’t,” she comments seriously. “Two of our friends eventually died from drug overdoses.”
FULL GUNNYSACKS FOR THE HOLIDAYS – LAST WEEK OF ROCK-FISHING PRODUCTIVE
Inshore: The local boats took advantage of some decent weather between fronts and found some decent bottom fishing for the anglers aboard. Entering into the last few days of rockfishing before that fishery closes on New Year’s Day until March 1, lots of reds, vermilions, sheephead and whitefish made it into Christmas gunnysacks over the holiday week. Considering no boats went out on Christmas Eve or Christmas, the counts reflect a good passenger load for the landings and catch total for this time
“Tom Wolfe really was a jerk when he was with us, and when the story came out, we knew he was a jerk.”
A mile away, in the dark, rustic
Bratskellar restaurant, Geoffrey Seales, now a 22-year-old manager of a bar in a Mission Beach restaurant, sips a drink. He is anxious to discuss his Pump House days. “That summer of 1965 was the year
marijuana first hit La Jolla,” Geoffrey remembers. Before that, he and Tom Coman had taken up daily collections for kegs of beer at “The Slots,” a hidden sec- tion of the beach where under-age drinkers were safe from police. “We weren’t exactly troublemakers, but too outrageous for La Jolla at that time.” Geoffrey remembers Tom Wolfe as
“some weird old man hanging around who asked questions while we made up a lot of the answers.” (Several other Gang members I talked to say that Wolfe’s story contained more fictitious incidents than factual; for example, Wolfe described a “toga party” which no one remembers.) “It was an insane summer,” Geoffrey
of year. A few ‘homeguard’ yellowtails were picked up off La Jolla, but most of those in the counts came from the Coronado Islands or points south.
Outside: There has been a resurgence of good size yellowtail from 20 to 35 pounds on the high spots south of Ensenada down to the 240 area south of San Martin Island with many limits caught. These fish are eating the yoyo and flat-fall irons just off the bottom and have been a nice surprise for those anglers usually targeting the larger model rockfish and lingcod the area is known for in the wintertime. They are also biting well in the 40 pound grade further south toward the Asunción area, where one usually finds wintering schools of yellowtail outside of the cool water
continues. “It sort of began in December when Leonard Anderson came down to the beach and shot his girlfriend Donna because she wouldn’t marry him. We all watched as he shot her and then shot him- self.” Geoffrey stops as if to conjure up a mental picture of the scene. “Then, two of our friends’ husbands were stunt pilots, and they flew over the beach to put on a show for us. Something screwed up and they crashed into the ocean and both drowned while we watched.” Again he pauses. “Of course, it was also strange to go see the Watts riots for fun…” (Some of the Pump House Gang jumped in a VW van and went joyriding in the riot area in L.A. during the 1965 riots.) In the same restaurant, another Pump
House devotee works as a waitress, Susie (Brandy in those days) Brandelius. Now 22, she is eons away from the Brandy pictured in New York Magazine, leaning on the Pump House in the arms of her 16-year- continued on page 61
plume that dissipates around Viscaino Bay. The big yellowfin tuna are still haunting the Ridge and Hurricane Bank south of Cabo San Lucas with a few of the big cows over 300 pounds already reported early in this long- range season.
Dock Totals 12/23-12/29: 1,403 anglers aboard 49 boats out of San Diego landings this past week caught 102 yellowtail, 32 calico bass, 25 sand bass, 8 bonito, 3,160 rockfish, 124 sheephead, 454 sanddab, 1 bocaccio, 6 rubberlip seaperch, 1 halfmoon, 154 whitefish, 16 lingcod, 1 cabezon, 4 halibut, 385 mackerel and 5 spiny lobster
Fish Plants: 1/9, Jennings, trout (1500), 1/10, Cuyamaca, trout (1,200)
San Diego Reader January 5, 2017 37
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